Month: January 2017

The nominations are typically announced as a big live press conference, with publicists and press agents gathered in Hollywood as the next year’s nominees are announced live.

Not this year – the event was scrapped and instead live-streamed from the Oscars’ web site. Most of the broadcast was pre-recorded interviews with past nominees (including Terrence Howard, Ken Watanabe, Guillermo del Toro) sharing stories from when they were nominated, and offering advice to this year’s nominees (“Don’t pop the champagne too early!”). Between all this was the actual listing of nominees by an (unseen) narrator. There was even a break between announcements, highlighting Jimmy Kimmel as he prepares to host this year’s Oscars.

Then the Best Picture nominees were announced by Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences president Cheryl Boone Isaacs.

While certainly not traditional Oscar-bait, Deadpool had been gaining steam since its nominations for Best Actor and Best Picture at the Golden Globes. There was quite a bit of talk that it could land an Adapted Screenplay and even Picture nod at the Oscars, but it was not too be.

Lots of love for Hacksaw Ridge. This film was not really on my radar, nor is it really being talked about, but its nominations for Picture, Actor, and Director (among others) certainly make this a movie to consider.

Amy Adams not being nominated for Arrival. While the film itself performed well (earning Picture, Director, and Screenplay nods), her performance is the heart and soul of the movie. A surprise in the Best Actress category is Ruth Negga from Loving (another film that has been largely left out during the awards season).

Hidden Figures also picked up steam, earning nods for Picture and Adapted Screenplay, as well as Supporting Actress (a nomination Octavia Spencer also earned at the Globes).

Finding Dory shut out of Best Animated Feature. This has also been left out of a few awards this year, including the Golden Globes, but I’m still amazed that such an emotionally powerful film somehow didn’t move the voters.

What movies are you rooting for? Who was shut out this year? Reply below in the comments!

It takes the question of “what if aliens landed on Earth?” to a remarkably layered and realistic level. Twelve massive spaceships land, in seemingly unrelated places, across the planet. Pandemonium, chaos, and the threat of global war soon follow.

Linguistics professor Louise Banks (Amy Adams) is recruited by the US military to make sense of what the aliens want. She teams up with physicist Ian Donnelly (Jeremy Renner) on a series of missions to meet and communicate with whatever is on board the space vessels.

This first half of the film recalls the deliberately paced sci-fi horrors of Stanley Kubrick and Ridley Scott. Sequences of the military team scaling up a space craft, and monstrous figures creeping out of the mist, all set to a horrifying score, make for some of the scariest scenes since The Witch.

As with much sci-fi, and certainly non-fiction, however, much of fear comes from the unknown. As Louise and the team fall into a rhythm and break ground in their work, the aliens become less threatening and more friendly, striving to share their message with the human race.

Arrival’s approach to this more optimistic theme pivots the film into more Malick-ian territory, with lucid montages and non-linear narrative. This proves to be more than just a stylistic choice, and the film takes on a significant weight of emotion and meaning.

If ever there were a 2016 awards season contender that I wasn’t expecting to be a tearjerker, it was Arrival. On the surface, it may appear to be just another sci-fi flick, but its thoughtful storytelling and moving emotional elements elevate it to a sublime level of sophistication.

2016 was an unusual year in the real world: one of political change, tragic losses, and confounding times. The world of cinema mirrored this in many ways, from rebels confronting an overpowering empire, an empowering feminist Puritan horror movie, and a blue fish trying to make sense of the ocean around her.

I haven’t been watching as many movies this year as last year, due to some personal changes on my side. I cut my cable cord and later Hulu, so less stuff was just “on” to kill time. What has also changed, and for the better, is watching fewer movies but with more meaning and getting share that experience with others.

Early in the year, in my quest to see all the films nominated for Best Picture, I saw Brooklyn in theaters with someone new in my life, who has long been a US citizen and immigrated here about 25 years ago. We didn’t speak at all during the movie, but afterwards wandered the quiet streets of Pasadena talking about our own family histories, the feeling of “newness,” and learning to find home in a new environment.

The experience of sharing love of movies, and our personal ties to them, continued on through the year, particularly with throwback screening events. At the El Capitan Theatre in Hollywood, I got to see Beauty and the Beast, Frozen, Hercules, Lady and the Tramp, The Princess and the Frog, and Tangled – and that’s not including the first-run movies that premiered there. Getting to see such long-beloved films in packed theaters, with devoted audiences both young and old, is a wonderful opportunity of living in Los Angeles.

Speaking of Los Angeles, my city has probably never looked better than it does in La La Land. Damien Chazelle’s modern musical is shot in warm oranges and lush purples, with thrilling musical sequences as vibrant as anything from the Golden Age of Hollywood. I’m eager to see how this one does come awards season.

It would also be tremendous for Zootopia to get some love, especially in the Best Original Screenplay category. There was probably no smarter movie in 2016 than this fast-talking comedy/mystery/thriller that tackled issues of gender, race, and class (to name a few) better than most movies for grown-ups, without coming across as preachy or with a set agenda. In today’s hyper-PC culture, it’s incredibly daring for a major film from a major studio to make a film saying we are not equal, the world is not colorblind, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to make it better. The rainbow palette landscape of the Zootopia metropolis gradually fades away into bleaker greys and browns as our optimistic heroine Judy Hopps gets deeper into a mystery, revealing the darker underbelly of the world she thought she loved.

The other triumph from Walt Disney Animation Studios was Moana, which took my heart like no other film this year. The epic scale of this Polynesian story about a princess who has to save her people has a mythic sense of destiny and importance, in a similar vein as Brave and even The Lion King. Its spectacular musical score is the most varied and consistently strong in years, with brilliant lyrics from the mastermind Lin-Manuel Miranda.

This year also had its share of disappointments – I left Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, Moonlight, and Rogue One: A Star Wars Story feeling lackluster, despite their critical acclaim and enthusiasm from audiences. Still, I appreciate getting to see different takes on existing franchises, and stories of people who frankly aren’t often portrayed onscreen, and the new ways of thinking they might inspire.

Here’s a look back at my 2016 in film:

248 films seen (0.68 movies per day, down from last year’s run rate of 0.73 movies per day)